Dr. Reuben Smith House (1770)

On North Street in Litchfield is a house built in 1770 for Dr. Reuben Smith and his new wife, Abigail Hubbard. Next to Dr. Smith’s home was his Apothecary Shop, later moved to Litchfield Green. The house is one of three on North Street known to have been constructed by the well-known builder of churches, Giles Kilborn of Bantam. The structure was altered in the nineteenth century, when the original central chimney was removed. It has since been reconstructed. The house has recently been for sale.

The Charles Butler House (1792)

In Historic Litchfield, 1721-1907 (1907), Alice T. Bulkeley writes:

The house now occupied by Mr. Elbert P. Roberts, one of Litchfield‘s real estate dealers, on the corner of North and East streets, was built in 1792 by Charles Butler, cashier of the Litchfield Bank. It was originally a story and a half gable-roofed house. In the early part of the nineteenth century [1813] it was bought by Frederick Deming, father of the present Mr. Frederick Deming of North street, who enlarged it and built on the east wing. When Mr. Deming moved to New York he sold the place to Oliver S. Weller, and the latter built the small building where the school now is, for a small store, where he sold dry and wet goods, chiefly the latter. After his death Mrs. Weller continued the business as long as she lived, when the house went to two nieces in Woodbury who are its present owners. On the death of these ladies the house will be the property of St. Michael’s Parish Church.

The David Welch House (1756)

Milton, a village in Litchfield, was settled in the mid-eighteenth century. David Welch arrived in Milton from New Milford in 1753 and established a puddling furnace for refining the pig iron brought from Salisbury. The furnace was on Shear Shop Road, located behind the saltbox house, at Potash and Milton Roads, which Welch built in 1756. Welch, who also bought and sold the iron ore mined in northwestern Connecticut, later constructed an addition, for use as a store, on the eastern end of his house. Welch did business with Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, and later served as a major in the War himself. Welch moved into another house in Milton in 1784, where he died in 1815. His original house was later owned by William Bissell, from 1860 to 1902. Bissell was a farmer, house painter and captain in the Civil War. The house was also used for many years as a parish house by the neighboring Trinity Episcopal Church. There is a pdf document available with additional pictures of the house’s exterior and interior.

The Alanson Abbe House (1832)

Dr. Alanson Abbe was a doctor who specialized in spinal injuries. He used his 1832 house, at 65 South Street in Litchfield, as a hospital for a decade before moving to Boston in 1839. The house, which has a portico with Doric columns wrapping around on three sides, is one of few high-style examples of the Greek Revival in Litchfield, because the town was in a period of economic decline during the period the style was in favor nationally.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Milton (1802)

Episcopal services were first held in the Milton section of Litchfield in 1792. At first, services were held five Sundays a year with the meetings taking place in private homes. In 1798, Episcopalians living in Milton were given permission by the First Episcopal Society to build their own chapel and Trinity Parish was established. Work on the church edifice began in 1802 and was not completed until 1826, with the church finally being consecrated (after all debts had been paid) in 1837. The church was designed by Oliver Dickinson, who modeled it on the second Trinity Church at Wall Street in New York. The church’s steeple was replaced, later in the nineteenth century, with four Gothic-style square-cornered turrets. The belfry and steeple were later both replaced after being struck by lightning in 1897. When the church was being repaired and wired for electricity in 1938, pinnacles with crosses were discovered that had once stood at the base of the initial steeple. This made it possible to determine the proportions of the old steeple and restore the church to its original appearance.

Litchfield County Courthouse (1889)

Four successive Litchfield County Courthouses have stood in the center of Litchfield. The first, built in 1752, was a plain building resembling a meeting house. The second, designed by William Sprats and built in 1797, was destroyed by fire in 1886. It was quickly replaced by a new courthouse, which also burned, just after its completion in 1888. Another new courthouse, designed by Waterbury architect Robert Wakeman Hill and constructed of Roxbury granite, was completed in 1889 in the Romanesque Revival style. As Litchfield embraced the Colonial Revival movement in the early twentieth century, a remodeling of the courthouse was undertaken in 1913-1914 to add space and also to better reflect the colonial character of the town. Georgian-style corner quoins were added to the structure and the original turreted tower was replaced with a new cupola. The building now serves as the Litchfield Judicial District Courthouse.